Mining, construction, and other large scale excavating operations require fleets of digging, loading, and hauling machines to remove and transport excavated material such as ore and overburden from an area of excavation to a processing location. For such an operation to be profitable, the fleet of machines must be productively and efficiently operated. Many factors can influence productivity and efficiency at a worksite including, among other things, worksite conditions (e.g., rain, snow, ground moisture levels, material composition, visibility, terrain contour, haul route conditions, haul route traffic, etc.) and machine operating conditions (e.g., age, state of disrepair, malfunction, fuel grade in use, payload, tire pressure, rolling resistance, transmission shift points, fuel limits, steering limits, machine travel speed, brake coolant temperature, transmission gear used for machine retarding/propulsion, etc.). Productivity and efficiency at a worksite is also affected by the machine operators themselves. For example, once an operator has become accustomed to operating the machine in a particular gear at locations along the haul route, the operator may avoid selecting alternate gears at such locations even though such alternate gears may result in more efficient machine operation in some situations. Such “gear limiting” by the operator may reduce the machine operating efficiency, and thus, the overall productivity of the worksite.
One attempt to improve worksite productivity and efficiency is disclosed in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2009/0198422 (the '422 publication) by Vik et al. published on Aug. 6, 2009. In the '422 publication, Vik et al. discloses a worksite management system having a plurality of machines, a plurality of data acquisition modules configured to monitor performance of each of the machines, and a controller in communication with the data acquisition modules. The controller is configured to collect machine performance data from the data acquisition modules, and detect a performance irregularity based on the collected machine performance data. The controller is further configured to analyze the collected machine performance data, and determine which of a machine condition, an operator condition, and a site condition is the predominant cause of the performance irregularity based on the comparison.
Although the system of the '422 publication may attempt to improve worksite productivity and efficiency by identifying a cause of a performance irregularity, the system of the '422 publication does little to assist the operator in operating the disclosed machines more efficiently. For instance, the system of the '422 publication is not configured to assist the operator in selecting a gear base on machine operation and worksite condition data. As a result, due to gear limiting, operators of the machines disclosed in the '422 publication may still operate the machines utilizing a suboptimal gear.
The present disclosure is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems of the prior art.